The Gunger Games in Peeta's Point of View
by SerenaM95
Summary: This is a fan-written non-profit version of The Hunger Games in Peeta's perspective. Mostly in accordance with the books rather than the movies. For legal purposes, all copyright to Suzanne Collins, 2008. (if this still breeches copyright conditions I'll gladly take it down)


When I wake up, the familiar cold stone of dread is heavy in my stomach. It's another reaping day. Surprisingly, I had managed an entire night of dreamless sleep, so still in fact, that I had woken in the exact same position I had fallen asleep.

I don't know why this intrigued me as much as it did. Perhaps I was just stalling.

I glance at the battered tin clock on the dresser, squinting to see it's still early, but still five minutes later than I wake on a regular day. It would appear I'm the only one up though, so nobody would know about it.

As if simply to prove my point, Aston rolls over and grunts an arrogant snore. I envy his ease. He's not been entered in the reaping for two years. He doesn't have to worry about being called out and torn away from everything. He doesn't have to face the possibility of being forced into a pen and face twenty three other kids just as desperate and terrified and afraid of death as you. The reaping holds no significance for him anymore. Once it's all done he can saunter back home and bake as usual.

Not like me, with my name in the reaping bowl four times. It would be more if we didn't have the bakery and it has probably saved my life these past years already. Stephen too, who's two years older than me and in the bowl for the last time ever before he's free.

Compared to the other kids in the District, we're some of the lucky ones, able to survive without state issued rations for kids who put their names in more than is legally required. Stephen even looks richer than the others. I imagine I do too. We're not skinny so that our bones poke through our skin like the others, and our clothes are cleaner and less tatty.

But none of that matters if our names are picked. In the arena, the richer die alongside the poorer at the hands of the Capitol.

I creep out of the bedroom and down the stairs towards the kitchen. I've been rising at five to bake every day since I was about seven. The cruel irony was that we could scarce afford the things that we made. Many breakfasts compiled entirely of stale bread of old cookies. Whatever the mayor and the other people coming in with sacks of money wouldn't buy.

I'd been kneading loaves of tiger bread for an hour and a half before Stephen clomped down the stairs and joined me in the kitchen. He barely met my eye before snapping a corner off a tray of stale flapjack, ramming it in his mouth, and washing his hands in the sink. Wordlessly, he powdered his hands and began baking with me.

Mum and dad joined us not even fifteen minuted later, and we silently fell into the rotating routine of baking, kneading, icing, measuring out ingredients and washing dirty equipment. Then Aston joined us some half an hour later and like most days, it became like a hot and crowded factory.

I'm glad for the distraction; balling my fists and pressing my palms into the malleable dough until it toughened up and setting it to the side to rise. It doesn't give much room to think about the reaping or... people, even on occasions when my mind _does_ wander, it's easy enough to surface back in to reality.

Usually it's when I'm distracted when I get clumsy and burn things or don't leave things to cool before decorating them so the icing runs. I've not made a mistake in ages and I intend to keep it that way, so I focus on the task at hand, which, changes to scrubbing trays that dad just tipped cookies and flapjacks from.

As usual, time passes in dollops, one moment it's seven AM and I'm kneading tiger bread, the next it's ten and I'm scrubbing pans and trays, then before I know it's twelve forty five and I need to stop carrying huge sacks of flour from the cellar to go and prepare.

We live above the shop, which means carrying buckets of hot water up to the tub in the small living space upstairs before stripping off and wallowing in the water which has cooled considerably to lukewarm. The water turns cloudy and white as the residual flour from my hands and my hair and behind my ears. Somehow it always gets behind my ears.

In the room, there's a starched light blue shirt and straight black trousers that mum laid out for me. On Stephen's bed he has a starched light green one and trousers to match.

He comes trailing in as I'm buttoning up my shirt. He nods at me, looking as green as his shirt. I know how he feels, the cold dread in my stomach is sending icy flushes to my feet and hands, and my palms are clammy as i use the comb to smooth out my hair.

"Peeta, Stephen, if you don't hurry we're going to be late!" Dad calls from down the stairs as I'm rubbing the last traces of grit from my shoes. They're just the ones I wear all the time to school and when I go to buy groceries so they're splattered with dust and dirt.

Resigned, I give up and trail Stephen down the stairs, noticing his hair dripping water on to his shirt.

The three of them are standing by the door, mum in a floaty pink dress that makes her somehow look frumpy, dad dressed similar to me and Stephen, but Aston didn't bother, wearing the same flour smeared jeans he wore all morning and the same checkered shirt and vest with bruises of purple icing.

I would scowl at him, but there's not much point and it wouldn't make me feel better anyway.

"You two ready?" Dad asks and Stephen gives a sharp nod, looking like he's going to be sick.

"Yeah, let's go." I say, ready to sprint if I was given the word, my nerves putting me on edge with both fear and anticipation.

It's a short walk to the square, literally two short market streets and it feels even quicker than usual with all the bright banners featuring both the huge number "12" and the seal of the Capitol hanging from buildings and camera crews perched all over the place. Even still, I can feel my stride quickening as I beeline for the registration table, Stephen falling away to the crowd while mum, dad, and Aston make their way to better observation areas.

Normally the square is nice area, easily the nicest in 12. Especially when the weather is nice and there are banners for other holidays hanging about, you would kid yourself into being a tourist. Not that 12 get many. Or any.

But not today while I file into the roped off area for 16 year olds. I spy Katniss in a powdery blue dress some way at the farthest end and I almost smile, but I don't. I drop my gaze and shuffle into the area I'm meant to be. I manage to be right behind Stephen and a little way from him stands Gale from the Seam.

The square gets more crowded, the clump of bodies generating so much heat a fine sweat breaks over my skin and my shirt sticks to my back. As large as the square is, District 12's eight thousand strong population simply doesn't fit, and latecomers are shepherded to adjacent streets to watch everything on large televisions where the stat broadcasts all the events live.

Derek, the butchers' boy and my friend since we were about three, slips in besides me with merely a shoulder bump before he stares at the ground through his newly sparkling glasses. As much as I hope my name isn't picked, I hope his isn't picked either. He's wiry and tall, despite being a merchant, and half blind, his glasses lens were so thick they magnify his eyes almost double the size. Besides that he has no sense of coordination, he often came in to school with bandages wrapped around his fingers from where he'd slipped from cutting some sort of joint of meat.

"Hey, Derek." I whisper and he looks up. I manage to smile for his sake, "May the odds be ever in your favour." I say in an accent mocking the Capitol one.

If he wasn't so nervous, I'm sure he'd have smiled. "Yeah, happy hunger games." He returns bitterly.

We look up towards the temporary stage assembled before the Justice Building. On it rests three chairs, a podium, and two large reaping bowls, one for boys and one for girls. I stare at them, the only things sparkling in the afternoon sun yet dulled by the imminent, ominous doom every kid between 12 and 18 is surely feeling.

One of the chairs are filled with Mayor Undersee, a tall balding man with a grim face, likely because his daughter Madge's name is in the bowl same as ours, despite his power in the district. It makes no difference in the eyes of the Capitol, only she's at less risk same as I am because we don't have to sign up for Tesserae. The other seat holds Effie Trinket with a ghostly pale white face and comical grin, wild pink hair and bizarre green suit. The two of them whisper to each other, shooting wary and hateful looks to the empty chair.

At precisely two o'clock, the mayor step forward to the podium and begins to read the same droll speech as every year. The history of Panem. How the country rose from the ashes from a place once called North America. He recites the disasters: droughts, storms, fires, seas that swallowed most of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained.

The result was Panem. The glittering Capitol surrounded by the thirteen districts, bringing peace and prosperity to the citizens. Then came the Dark Days, where the districts rebelled against the tyranny of the Capitol. Twelve were defeated and the thirteenth obliterated. The Treaty of Treason laid out new laws to guarantee peace and, as a yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, the treaty gave us the Hunger Games.

The rules of the Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must surrender one boy and one girl tribute to participate. The 24 unlucky ones will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could contain any number of atrocities and any sort of climate from burning deserts to frozen Fjords. The tributes must, over the following few weeks, fight to the death in order to survive. The last one standing will be declared the winner.

The treaty declared the Hunger Games punishment, but 74 years later it's become less about being punished and more about reminding the districts of their subordination to the wrath of the Capitol. Reminding the districts how completely at their mercy we are and the threat that another rebellion will wipe us off the maps and mark us in the history books the same as District 13.

And to make it worse and rub salt in the wound, the Hunger Games is often regarded by the Capitol as a festivity, a holiday. Their plastic-faced presenters often chucking about the slaughter of twenty three children in tones of merriment.

The last tribute alive can then look forwards to a peaceful life riddled by psychological trauma in their new grand home in their district's Victor's Village, their district is showered with gifts, mostly compiled of food. All year the capitol will televise the winning district receiving their gifts of oil and grains and even delicacies like sugar and spices, while the rest of the population minus the Capitol watch on with hollow stomachs and resentment in their hearts.

"It is both a time for repentance and a time for thanks." The mayor says with sounds of strain in his voice.

Then he reads a list of District 12's victors. In seventy four years we have had two, and only one alive. Haymitch Abernathy, a haggard looking, middle aged man who at the moment is staggering on the stage, hollering something slurred and unintelligible. He flops into the chair, evidently intoxicated. The crowd claps him and he tries to hug Effie in confusion. She bats him off. Barely.

The mayor looks distressed between Haymitch and the camera crews. Since this is all televised live, the entire country is watching and no doubt 12 is the laughing stock and the butt of many jokes, and he knows this, his face tinged with red.

He tries to draw the attention back to the reaping and introduces Effie who leaps from her seat and bounds towards the podium. With a large false, grin and in her bright and bubbly voice she recites her signature "Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be _ever_ in your favour!" Her bright pink curls are no doubt a wig as her coif has been nudged askew since her encounter with Haymitch. She then babbles on about the honour of being here, despite it being public knowledge she's just biding her time until he's given a better district with victors with better etiquette and don't molest you in front of the entire nation.

Many of the kids waiting in the crowd fidget foot to foot, some smirking about the comic relief provided by our pathetic victor, but almost instantly the mood is subdued like a somber blanket has been draped over our shoulders, all remembering that our names are in the bowl. Even with the thousands of names in their, it's not enough to be reassured that your name is in there even once.

The it's time to draw the first name. As she always does, Effie smiles broadly and declares "Ladies first!" before tottering over to the glass bowl with the girls name in it. She roots around for a good while to add do the dramatic effect before pulling one out to the light. The crowd draws a collective breath and the silence is so complete you could hear the fowl in the forest outside of the district.

Unfolding it and plastering a a delighted smile on her face she ducks to the microphone and reads the name out carefully.

"Primrose Everdeen."


End file.
